Demand for site search is growing due the increasing use of digital sales channels both by retailers and consumers. In 2018, the percentage of UK consumers who made at least one purchase online in the last 12 months grew to 97%. Current revenue for the e-commerce market amounts to £61,258m, and it will continue to grow by an annual rate of 5.9%, resulting in a market volume of £77,164m by 2023. However, it is only through providing an exceptional shopping experience that online shops can capitalise on this growing digital potential.
Site performance and product findability directly impact whether a customer makes a purchase or abandons their product search completely. A study aimed at online shoppers asked what their biggest frustrations were with site search. From over 1,000 shoppers surveyed, 28% said they are offered irrelevant product results, 24% are unable to find the product they’re searching for, and 18% struggle with the search function not recognizing the words they use – together, that’s three fourths of potential customers lost. Usability relies on site search – the better the site search, the better the user experience, the higher the probability of conversion.
FinancesOnline is an independent review platform that helps business professionals find the best B2B and SaaS solutions by comparing products, providing customer reviews and expert analyses. Understanding the importance and impact of site search for online businesses, the review platform did what it does best: it gathered the best site search solutions in the market and analysed them according to flexibility, configurability, ease of use, and pricing. FACT-Finder is thrilled to announce that it came in at the number one spot, receiving the title of “Best Site Search Solution for 2019”.
Cooksongold, the UK’s largest one-stop shop for jewellery-makers, is an exemplary success story of what retailers can achieve with FACT-Finder. This B2B retailer offers more than 18,000 products in its online stores, which range from quality metals to beading. Due to this large and complex assortment, it was often difficult for customers to find the right products. As soon as they mistyped or searched for a product by keywords other than the ones stored in the database, they were presented with the wrong products or none at all – a recurring issue for online retailers. With FACT-Finder’s powerful error-tolerant and intuitive search engine, Cooksongold has increased conversion rates by 26%.
Cooksongold has also benefited from FACT-Finder’s merchandising functions. When a particular keyword repeats itself in store visitors’ search queries or when specific sales events are approaching, Cooksongold can quickly create high-converting, keyword-based campaigns – all without the need for IT. Creating and managing their campaigns twice as fast as before has allowed them to run many more highly profitable campaigns per year, leading to a 26% increase in the number of transactions. Due to the international scalability of the software and the language-independent search, they have been able to transfer this success across six new European markets, resulting in a 22% growth in revenue. With FACT-Finder technology Cooksongold got more than an on-site search provider – they got an all-in-one solution.
FinancesOnline highlighted various key reasons why professionals looking to improve their site search should choose FACT-Finder technology, including:
- All-in-one solution. On-site search, navigation, merchandising, personalisation and more: FACT-Finder improves all shop functions that lead customers to the most relevant products in record time. The software suite consists of five modules that you can configure to fit your unique requirements via an easy-to-use back-end.
- Powerful search results. FACT-Finder’s patented Worldmatch® algorithm finds the most relevant products despite spelling mistakes or complex, multi-word searches – even in complex languages, such as Japanese or Cantonese. Automatic search optimisation continuously improves the results thanks to Machine Learning.
- Artificial Intelligence. “What sets FACT-Finder apart from the other site search solutions is its built in AI capability,” says FinancesOnline. FACT-Finder’s personalisation, semantic enhancer, Predictive Basket, recommendation engine and actionable analytics are all functions that benefit from AI.
FinancesOnline experts add, “With the above factors mentioned, we highly recommend our top solution FACT-Finder as the site search solution for you.” They conclude, “The powerful solution has all the tools you need to deliver the most relevant results to each store visitor. It boasts Europe’s leading conversion engine as well as the best algorithm for e-commerce business. Besides, features like the predictive basket, faceted navigation, and robust recommendation engine set FACT-Finder apart from other site search solutions.” To read the full review, visit Best 20 Site Search Solutions for 2019.
FACT-Finder’s newest release is Next Generation. This technological innovation takes a disruptive step forward in terms of performance. B2C and B2B retailers can benefit from up to 100x faster search speed through optimised utilisation and newly invented methods for mapping polydimensional similarities. Even with millions of products, response times are just a few milliseconds. The release also brings along more computing power by using an in-memory database, a management system that uses the memory of a computer as data storage. These structures allow for any number of customer-specific prices and product ranges to be displayed in online channels – without any loss in performance. Additionally, the geo-search rooted in the core provides a valuable technology for retailers who want to digitally map products from different locations. FACT-Finder Next Generation has been carefully developed for retailers with complex requirements. Be it big data, intricate price structures, numerous sales channels, international expansion – or everything combined.
As a leading SaaS provider, FACT-Finder offers free demo plans that allow retailer to test drive the software features at no cost and make well-informed decisions. To understand how the software can help to boost companies’ efficiency and profitability, visit: https://www.fact-finder.com/request-a-demo.html.
Sources:
- https://www.statista.com/outlook/243/156/ecommerce/united-kingdom?currency=gbp
- https://www.statista.com/outlook/243/156/ecommerce/united-kingdom?currency=gbp
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https://financesonline.com/site-search/ and www.marketingcharts.com
